Fountain Hill woman finds apartment gutted by fire after a walk with her baby

Three are displaced. Firefighter suffers knee injury in a fall in the building.

Firefighters battle an apartment house fire at 913 Seneca St. in Fountain… (KEVIN MINGORA, THE MORNING…)

June 14, 2012|By Frank Warner, Of The Morning Call

A Fountain Hill woman was pushing her baby boy in a stroller behind their apartment home Wednesday afternoon when she saw a firetruck in the alley.

She looked up to the second-floor apartment at 913 Seneca St. and gasped.

It was about 5:05 p.m. The rear window was gone, its frame burned and blackened. The back door was wide open, and firefighters were moving through the woman's fire-gutted bedroom.

"Oh my God, oh my God!" she said, her eyes filling with panic and tears. "I can't believe this. I can't believe this. I went for a walk. How did this happen?"

She lifted her baby from the stroller and told borough police and a paramedic that she lived in the apartment the firefighters were walking through.

"What happened?" she asked.

The police and paramedic explained that the fire was reported at 4:05 p.m. The fire was out, and fire officials had only begun to investigate how it started.

"We were gone for like an hour," the woman said, shaking her head. Her baby looked bewildered, but was quiet.

The woman said she had taken her baby in his stroller about 3:30 p.m. for a walk in the sunny weather. They went to a dollar store and made a few other stops, and nothing was wrong when she left, she said.

A man who lived in the first-floor apartment tried to console her, telling her that she was fortunate the fire didn't happen while she and her baby were sleeping.

"I can't imagine that," she said. "I'm never going to sleep again."

The American Red Cross of the Greater Lehigh Valley provided temporary lodging to two adults and the baby from the burned-out apartment, and to the man who lived in the water-damaged apartment downstairs.

Courtney Houser of 937 Seneca St. said she saw the fire as she walked her dog.

"I saw the flames coming out of the back of the house," Houser said. "I saw the smoke just shooting up and then I saw the flames."

Assistant Chief Daniel Pope said a borough firefighter injured his knee when he fell in the house, but no one else was hurt.

The fire was out in about a half-hour, Pope said. Assisting the borough firefighters were the Nancy Run, Se-Wy-Co and Emmaus fire companies.